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4160 Tuesdays

“Doe in the Snow was made for a special occasion one January, for a very special customer. It’s inspired by the fruity chypre fragrances of the 1960s and 70s, but with a layer of frost. Citrus fruits, flowers and woods, stirred with an icicle. Imagine a tall, elegant woman, dressed in red and white velvet, but at ground level, she’s wearing her wellington boots so her feet don’t get cold and wet. Graceful, yet practical.”

– Sarah McCartney

It’s descriptions like the one above that affirm my love for London-based indie perfume house, 4160 Tuesdays. Any fragrance that can be described as “graceful, yet practical” and pairs vintage couture with wellington boots is a winner in my book, and its a style of fragrant inspiration that is the DNA of 4160 Tuesdays. The scent in question is Doe in the Snow, an incredibly special fragrance created for the wedding of “purveyor of olfactory adventures”, Odette Toilette.

Seeing as Doe in the Snow is indeed, very special, I thought I would dedicate my final review of the year (where has 2014 gone, people?!) to what is a gorgeous fragrance, and one that perfectly captures the wonderful image Sarah describes in the quote above. Doe in the Snow is further proof that there is a serious amount of magic happening within the London studio of 4160 Tuesdays. Wonderful magic that is enchanting many a nose and keeping the perfume industry an inspired, and interesting place.

I continue to be incredibly impressed by the output from London-based indie brand, 4160 Tuesdays. Perfumer Sarah McCartney has a natural knack for perfumery, but also the subversive talent of injecting humour and eccentricity into her compositions. The result is exceptionally well-crafted fragrances that have bold and bright characters, that one would really have to be a miserable git not to enjoy.

One of Sarah’s most recent creations is New York 1955, a fragrance that was originally launched under her diffusion ‘Vintage Tuesdays’ line, and now sits within the multi-coloured wardrobe of scent that is 4160 Tuesdays. Evoking the image of pastel-shaded ice cream parlors from the 1950s, this perfume is a beautiful rosy-gourmand that is as delicious as it is colourful.

“One of my favourite vintage 1950s scents was Coty’s Chantilly, named after the French town famous for its whipped cream and intricate lace. It’s a soft strawberry and cream perfume, decorated with crystalised rose. For New York 1955 I transported the desert theme over the Atlantic to a New York milk bar, turned up the volume, piled it with vanilla ice cream and raspberries, loaded it with candy floss, crystalised roses and violets, and smoothed it with soft, huggable musks and ambergris.”

The Candy Perfume Boy’s ‘Guide to…‘ series is an award winning fragrant exploration of the individual notes that make up the vast and multi-dimensional spectrum that is the world of perfume. In each episode, we take a detailed look at a particular ingredient, analysing its odour profile and the ‘must sniff’ perfumes that serve as reference examples within the genre.

So far in the series, we’ve taken a gander at the lusciousness of lily, variety of violet and the tenacity of tuberose. We’ve also ogled at oud, chomped on chocolate and orbited the world of orange blossom. All-in-all, it’s been a fun and fragrant exploration of some of perfumery’s most beloved ingredients, but our journey is far from over and we have many more smells to sniff. So buckle up as we take off for our next fragrant expedition – a mission to Planet Vanilla.

In this latest instalment of The Candy Perfume Boy’s Guide to, we’re going to explore all that is vanilla – a note that is as well-known as it is delicious. The use of vanilla in perfume is most certainly plentiful and to serve you, dear reader, I have separated the wheat from the chaff to present you with eight vanilla perfumes that are absolute must sniffs on your fragrant journey. I promise you that they all smell absolutely fabulous!

It’s really heating up here in the Kingdom of the United. Friday was the hottest day of the year so far, with the mercury making its way up to a rather scorching 27ºC (that’s 80ºF to my American counterparts). I spent the day soaking up the sun at Wireless festival, enjoying the melodic tones of Pharrell Williams and the egotistical rants of Kanye West. Many people however, would have flocked to the coast to top up their Vitamin D levels on one of the countries many beaches.

I do love a good beach, but I must admit that I am not a fan of sunbathing – my short attention span makes sure of that (it’s so short, in fact, that it’s a miracle that I managed to make it to the end of that last sentence). Thankfully for me, Britain offers an array of coastlines ranging from the full-on seaside resorts, complete with candy floss, beach huts and donkey rides to the abandoned sand dunes of almost-forgotten beaches in the farthest corners of the country.

In this piece, I take a look at some of my favourite seaside perfumes. Fragrances that are evocative of the beach, whether that be the hot sands of an exotic getaway or the cold shingle of a British seaside town – there’s even a fragrance that conjures up the image of an alien landscape – a beach on the planet Venus. So pack your sunglasses and your bucket and spade, ’cause we’re going on a short summer holiday and a scented tour of the world’s smelliest beaches.

Sex sells, as they say, and the world of perfume is certainly no exception. We are constantly bombarded with hyper-sexualised images of men and women, gently caressing perfume bottles and writhing around in faux wind-machine-assisted ecstasy, all just to spur us to part with cash at our local branch of Debenhams. Some brands go even further and play with the naked form in a deliberately shocking way, like Tom Ford with his verging-on-the-obscene Terry Richardson ad campaign for Tom Ford for Men, for example, or even Yves Saint Laurent and their slightly more tasteful, but still completely full frontal print ad for M7 (both NSFW links courtesy of Mr. Ford’s artistic direction, FYI).

But what makes a perfume sexy? Well, one would think that the answer to this question is entirely subjective, and in reality I think that is most likely to be the case. I imagine our idea of ‘sexiness’ in scent to be similar to the appearance of love potions in the world of Harry Potter (bear with me here), where the smell that each potion exudes is unique to the individual that sniffs it, depending on what they find attractive in a person. To put it another way – one man’s sexy fragrance is another’s olfactory cold shower, and it would be true to say that many supposedly ‘sexy’ scents fail to deliver, whereas the most seductive scents seem to be those that aren’t necessarily billed as such – sexy surprises, if you will.

One fragrance that makes rather bold claims about being ‘hot’ is 4160 Tuesdays’ ‘The Sexiest Scent on the Planet. Ever. (IMHO)‘. Well, that’s what one would think from the name, but in reality this perfume, which was originally created by perfumer Sarah McCartney as a base for her Gin Garden scent and inadvertently named by a Tatler journalist, has a moniker that is served with tongue pressed firmly in cheek. The truth however, is that this fragrance is wonderfully executed, delicious and one of the easiest scents to wear on the planet. Ever.

4160 Tuesdays is an exciting niche brand, there’s no denying it. Perfumer Sarah McCartney successfully blends British eccentricity, good-quality ingredients and unique accords to create perfumes that are unusual, fun and unsurprisingly, rather beautiful. It’s hard not to fall for the charm of a perfume brand that is founded on the principle of not-wasting away one’s days and doing something different with those 4160 Tuesdays one has before reaching the ripe old age of 80 – I certainly have.

I therefore, could not resist an invitation to Sarah McCartney’s London studio this past weekend for ‘The Wall of Scent’, a regular event scheduled at 4160 Tuesdays HQ as an introduction to the world of perfume; it’s families, ingredients and masterpieces. It’s an informative day that allows one, no matter whether they’re an expert or a novice, to really get to grips with the way perfumes are made and some of the raw materials, whether natural or ‘synthetic’, that are used in making the perfumes one wears on a day-to-day basis.

It’s that time of year where we all start to put together our Christmas wish lists for Santa, or as I like to call him – ‘Nigel’. Being the perfume nuts that we are means that beloved family and friends can sometimes struggle to pick fragrances out as gifts for us, after all we’re a selective (read: ‘picky’) bunch by nature and nobody would want us to open up a gift that we would deem as unsuitable on the big day.

To mitigate the chances of a botched perfume purchase at Christmas I supply a perfume wish list to my partner and my father every year. The other members of my family family flatly refuses to buy me any perfume, stating that I have “too much” and it’s “bordering on an obsession”. Who knows what they’re smoking, but I can always rely on my dad and Nigel (if he’s in a good mood) to pick something from my carefully selected list.